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Trade Bill Fails In the House
schwit1 writes: President Obama suffered a major defeat to his Pacific Rim free trade initiative Friday as House Democrats helped derail a key presidential priority despite his last-minute, personal plea on Capitol Hill. "In a remarkable rejection of a president they have resolutely backed, House Democrats voted to kill assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has stood by for four decades. By doing so, they brought down legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress — before it could even come to a final vote." This was after Silicon Valley heavyweights made a last minute push to pass the bill and the White House got personal with many Democratic lawmakers.
are the last vestige of the place congresscritters respect the will of their voters
in every other realm plutocrats own them
this will be "corrected"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While the summary is trying to make this some kind of huge rebuff of the President by democrats in Congress, the only serious problem with this bill is it was for too long of a time period. Obama is only in office for another 18 months, and this fast track authority would have extended years after he is gone. This vote had almost nothing to do with democrats not trusting Obama; it was them not trusting the unknown President who will take his mantle a couple years from now.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You do realize that the Government has already made similar deals with Canada and Mexico, so what we see now is simple hoodwinking. Wikileaks has blown their cover too many times and people are largely fed up. If they could have kept it all secret it would have happened, so now we have to find all of the back door bullshit they are pushing through elsewhere.
The US has not been Capitalist since at least Reagan, but at least until NAFTA we could say "pseudo capitalist". More and more control, more and more wealth redistribution where the majority goes to the wealthy, Fascism at it's purest definition.
How is that Utopia working out for all of you people that keep thinking more Government will solve all our problems? (Not directed at GP, just a general audience question)
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Clinton, the former Walmart exec., gave China MFN status which started the huge growth of Chinese industry in the late 90's. The common "Walmart America" upper middle class Clintonista is all about shelves full of Chinese stuff to fill their mcmansions, and with the possible exception of Obama you can't find a bigger proponent of TPP than Clinton.
It was Obama Democrats that tripped up this trade deal. Blacks, labor and others have been made surplus people through competition with disposable foreign workers and they've finally — after half a century — figured it out.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The TTP should be a Treaty, but what it is instead is a secret agreement that Congress would vote on as a regular bill, not a Treaty. The whole point of "fast track" is that it wouldn't be approved even on this basis, so the President needs advance approval on an agreement with terms that are not final and in any case cannot be legally revealed in public. (Congressmen and women have to go to a special room to read them, and can't take notes out.)
Never mind that this "trade agreement" really just represents corporations trying to get things through the back door they could never get through Congress directly, even if it just contained recipes for Apple pie it should be opposed by anyone who cares about our Constitutional system of Government. Treaties, or for that matter normal laws, can be negotiated in private, but they need to be discussed and passed in public.
The Democrats voted against TAA (the fig-leaf program that pretends to help workers who lose their jobs to a new trade bill), which was contrary to their normal voting pattern, AS A TACTIC TO INDUCE A DELAY. "Fast Track" actually PASSED. Given that TAA and Fast Track passed together in the Senate, their failure to pass together in the House is a temporary shoe tossed into the gears of this monstrosity, BUT it can be overcome easily by the Senate simply mimicking what the House did.
This was political magic for a bunch of people; Democrats Senators will be able to tell their union supporters that they supported TAA (in the earlier Senate action), even as enough of them voted for Fast Track. Democrat House members will be able to say they stood against Fast Track, even though many supported it and the Senate may align their work with what the House did and thereby pass it. Many Republicans who opposed Fast Track were able to vote "yes" in order to placate their business backers even as the thing stalled. Many Republicans who oppose TAA but did not want to be the ones to kill it got to watch as the Dems did that, etc. Nearly every political group in DC got something they can use to deceive this or that voting block. Ultimately, the groups pushing this massive crap sandwich are going to demand it and get it, unless the public (from labor-concerned Dems, to sovereignty-concerned TEA Partiers) stand up and make it clear that votes out-weigh campaign cash.
After 200+ years, the congress critters have highly-optimized the political theater in Washington so their big money backers get what they want without the public getting too mad. They have gotten away with this garbage over and over again with things like NAFTA, the WTO, etc. People on the other side of the Atlantic have had the same thing done to them by their political elites.... The UK into the EU, followed by continual-but-never-filfilled promises of a public vote on that membership was such a trick that subsumed national rules into an international agreement. These things are all alike: they allow the wealthy and powerful to get what they want and the politicians to pretend to be powerless because: unaccountable international body and treaty. They never want the public to ask "WHO CREATED THAT BODY OR THAT TREATY?"
Its easier to buy one President than 535 members of Congress.
And for some truly ill-advised and unpopular ideas its more practical to wait for a President of a suitable ideological bent than wait for a Congressional majority.
Hence the founding fathers wisely distributing powers amongst branches. Ie the executive negotiating a treaty, the legislature making it law, and the supreme court deciding if the law is constitutional.